Mormon church now regards The Nauvoo Expositor as a “credible resource”

[Robert F. Smith]

On 8/5/2025 at 12:47 PM, Notatbm said:

WRONG: it is right here:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-31-honesty?lang=ase

“Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (⁠Exodus 20:16⁠). Jesus also taught this when He was on earth (see Matthew 19:18⁠). There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.”

Looks like a dictionary definition to me.  Nothing noteworthy here at all, and I don't get your point.  Perhaps you demand infallibility of human leaders, a demand which is completely foreign to Latter-day Saint theology.  I treat this question briefly at https://qr.ae/pA0hkr .

Some people claim that Jesus lied, as depicted in John 7:8-10.  Indeed, the Bible is filled with thousands of internal contradictions.  How is that possible?

On 8/5/2025 at 12:47 PM, Notatbm said:

I already did but here it is again just for you:

https://archive.org/details/Primary5/page/n218/mode/1up

lesson 37

“Some enemies of the Church believed that if they got rid of Joseph Smith, the Church would fall apart. These men started a newspaper in which they told many vicious lies about Joseph Smith. The members of the Church were angry about these lies. Joseph Smith, who was mayor of Nauvoo at the time, called a meeting of the city council, which was composed of both Church members and nonmembers. The city council declared the newspaper a "public nuisance" and ordered the town marshal to destroy the printing press used to print the newspaper.”

It is page 228 of the pdf or page 211 of the document itself. The publishing date of this particular archived manual is 1997. 

Thank you.  I should have caught that first time around.  However, you'll notice that it refers to "many vicious lies," not to polygyny.  The Primary lesson nowhere denies that Joseph had plural wives, and they would have been foolish to have done so.

On 8/5/2025 at 12:47 PM, Notatbm said:

....,  but it wasn’t until about 2014 that the church formally acknowledged Joseph smith himself practiced polygamy with the publishing of the  gospel topics essay on the subject. Many members were not aware JS himself practiced it apparently. I know I didn’t and my family is packed with polygamists. They are very proud of it. 

Nonsense.  At 84 years of age, I have never met any Latter-day Saints who claimed that Joseph did not have plural wives.  I have met many RLDS members who did not believe in Joseph's polygyny, of course, but that was while I lived in Independence, Missouri.  My friend Richard Howard, RLDS Church History Commissioner, was the one who wrote the important article destroying that silly notion.  It was Fawn Brodie who had initially listed most of those wives by name for the general public (1945).

Your claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had always claimed otherwise is absurd.

[Notatbm]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Looks like a dictionary definition to me.  Nothing noteworthy here at all, and I don't get your point.  Perhaps you demand infallibility of human leaders, a demand which is completely foreign to Latter-day Saint theology.  I treat this question briefly at https://qr.ae/pA0hkr .

you said the church didn’t have its own definition of lying. I proved to you it did. No dictionary has as a definition of lying what I have holder there. I never demanded anything in my post of anyone so I’m not sure how I should respond. Since you ask I do demand our leaders be honest …. Completely honest. 

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Your claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had always claimed otherwise is absurd.

Did I claim the church “always” denied polygamy? If so where? You need to provide a quote because I cannot find where I said that. 
 

I did say the church “formally “ acknowledged JS practiced polygamy in about 2014 with the publishing of the essays. Here’s what the news said: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363324816/mormon-church-admits-founder-joseph-smith-had-up-to-40-wives

Edited August 7, 2025 by Notatbm

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Notatbm said:

you said the church didn’t have its own definition of lying. I proved to you it did. No dictionary has as a definition of lying what I have holder there. I never demanded anything in my post of anyone so I’m not sure how I should respond. Since you ask I do demand our leaders be honest …. Completely honest. 

Yep -- "completely honest" = infallible.  Some writer working for the Church published a standard dictionary definition, and you falsely concluded that it is odd or somehow off the wall.  That is not a completely honest assessment.

1 hour ago, Notatbm said:

Did I claim the church “always” denied polygamy? If so where? You need to provide a quote because I cannot find where I said that. 

You said the following in your initial post here:

 

Quote

Iirc the church always taught the Nauvoo expositor was just a bunch of viscous lies… so now it isn’t all a bunch of viscious lies? What else was printed in the Nauvoo Expisitor that is true?

“Did Joseph Smith practice plural marriage, or was it introduced by Brigham Young and others?

Joseph Smith introduced the practice, not Brigham Young. Credible contemporary sources document Joseph’s practice of plural marriage. Later, many faithful men and women who knew of Joseph’s practice of plural marriage gave sworn testimony of it.”

I quoted you repeatedly.  You immediately connected the "always" here with polygyny.  That is the only "vicious" lie that interested you.  Why the deliberate deception?

1 hour ago, Notatbm said:

I did say the church “formally “ acknowledged JS practiced polygamy in about 2014 with the publishing of the essays. Here’s what the news said: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363324816/mormon-church-admits-founder-joseph-smith-had-up-to-40-wives

Joseph's practice of polygyny was common knowledge among Latter-day Saints long before 2014, and Church historians made a regular practice of discussing it.  Indeed DNA studies were used long before 2014 to try to find any possible polygynous offspring of Joseph.  Again, why your deception?

1 hour ago, Notatbm said:

you said the church didn’t have its own definition of lying. I proved to you it did. No dictionary has as a definition of lying what I have holder there. I never demanded anything in my post of anyone so I’m not sure how I should respond. Since you ask I do demand our leaders be honest …. Completely honest. 

Did I claim the church “always” denied polygamy? If so where? You need to provide a quote because I cannot find where I said that. 

I did say the church “formally “ acknowledged JS practiced polygamy in about 2014 with the publishing of the essays. Here’s what the news said: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363324816/mormon-church-admits-founder-joseph-smith-had-up-to-40-wives

The Gospel Topics Essays in no way justify your quirky claims.  None are canonical and are provided for information purposes only.

Edited August 7, 2025 by Robert F. Smith

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Notatbm said:

I did say the church “formally “ acknowledged JS practiced polygamy in about 2014 with the publishing of the essays.

How are you defining “formally”?

This appears to ignore the fact that the Church published details of JS engaging in plural marriage in its Institute manuals since the 70s at the very least.  Does this qualify as “formal” in your view (they are officially authorized manuals published and distributed by the Church, likely reviewed by the Correlation Committee, etc.)?  If they are not “formal” in your view, why not?  Serious question.

The npr article states “In an essay posted without fanfare to its website in late October, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said for the first time that Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, had as many as 40 wives.”  That is not a claim that it’s the first time the Church acknowledged Jospeh’s polygamy.  It simply refers to the possible number of his wives and does not exclude previous discussion of Joseph personally engaging in plural marriage.  Therefore the article does not support the claim the Church first “formally” acknowledged in about 2014 with the essays.

Edited August 7, 2025 by Calm

[Notatbm]

12 hours ago, Calm said:

How are you defining “formally”?

This appears to ignore the fact that the Church published details of JS engaging in plural marriage in its Institute manuals since the 70s at the very least.  Does this qualify as “formal” in your view (they are officially authorized manuals published and distributed by the Church, likely reviewed by the Correlation Committee, etc.)?  If they are not “formal” in your view, why not?  Serious question.

The npr article states “In an essay posted without fanfare to its website in late October, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said for the first time that Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, had as many as 40 wives.”  That is not a claim that it’s the first time the Church acknowledged Jospeh’s polygamy.  It simply refers to the possible number of his wives and does not exclude previous discussion of Joseph personally engaging in plural marriage.  Therefore the article does not support the claim the Church first “formally” acknowledged in about 2014 with the essays.

Formally? Publishing the essays. There would be no need to do that if the information was taught in the correlated curriculum starting from primary. Since they didn’t and the internet beat them to it, the church had to publish the essays. 
 

Steven snow offers good commentary on what went on with that, why they did it and why they rolled out the way they did. . I’m sure you have heard it all so I won’t post any links. 

[Notatbm]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 Why the deliberate deception?

Joseph's practice of polygyny was common knowledge among Latter-day Saints long before 2014, and Church historians made a regular practice of discussing it.  Indeed DNA studies were used long before 2014 to try to find any possible polygynous offspring of Joseph.  Again, why your deception?

The Gospel Topics Essays in no way justify your quirky claims.  None are canonical and are provided for information purposes

this item you quoted is the reference provided in the document that also had a link and a footnote number which you conveniently left out. My post stated the church cited the Nauvoo expositor and I provided the link where the reader could find it. The post is about the expositor. Not polygamy. The only reason polygamy was even mentioned is because it is in the referenced quote so the reader could find the footnote. 
 

you don’t need to lie about my post. If you feel you need to at least provide the link and footnote number just like I did instead of omitting it. 

Edited August 7, 2025 by Notatbm

[webbles]

58 minutes ago, Notatbm said:

Formally? Publishing the essays. There would be no need to do that if the information was taught in the correlated curriculum starting from primary. Since they didn’t and the internet beat them to it, the church had to publish the essays. 
 

Steven snow offers good commentary on what went on with that, why they did it and why they rolled out the way they did. . I’m sure you have heard it all so I won’t post any links. 

Would you say that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledge that Joseph was the Nauvoo Legion general since I don't think there is anything in the correlated curriculum about that?  Or that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledged that Hyrum had lost his first wife in Kirtland for the same reason?  Or that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledged that Martin Harris remarried a young woman 31 years his junior in Kirtland (I didn't even know about this till last year)?  Or that the church didn't "formally" acknowledge the Mountain Meadow Massacre till the essays since no correlated curriculum mentioned that (and still doesn't)?

There's lots of historical facts that aren't taught in the correlated curriculum.  I have a hard time accepting that it has to be in the correlated curriculum to mean the church has "formally" acknowledged something.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, webbles said:

Would you say that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledge that Joseph was the Nauvoo Legion general since I don't think there is anything in the correlated curriculum about that?  Or that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledged that Hyrum had lost his first wife in Kirtland for the same reason?  Or that the church hasn't "formally" acknowledged that Martin Harris remarried a young woman 31 years his junior in Kirtland (I didn't even know about this till last year)? 

There's lots of historical facts that aren't taught in the correlated curriculum.  I have a hard time accepting that it has to be in the correlated curriculum to mean the church has "formally" acknowledged something.

And apparently Sunday correlated curriculum only.  Apparently the correlated curriculum Institute students go through is not enough to qualify as “formal” for notatbm.  

Even though the Gospel Topics Essays themselves are more comparable to Church magazines pre-Internet where wards pushed to get members to sign up for Church magazines in regular drives.  Besides trying to place them in every member’s home, they were meant to be officially part of every ward library according to the Handbook (at least they were when I was a ward librarian and I see no reason why this wouldn’t be true prior to my time given the evidence of the magazines in the ward library in my youth on up).

Even a memorial placed by the Church and officially, publicly dedicated by the Church President, (in the case of Mountain Meadows Gordon B Hinckley), would not qualify under such a restricted definition of “formal”.

Given there was no Internet in the 70s to publish essays on and these Institute manuals were easily accessible, inexpensive required reading produced by the Church for BYU and other college age adults and others to buy if interested (I was not a BYU student when I bought them, I bought them in Utah, but they were available in a church member owned Church bookstore I worked at in Canada, I vaguely remember them being offered in the member catalog that got sent out with the magazines on occasion, but I might be wrong on that), I find notatbm’s very restrictive definition of “formal” extreme and idiosyncratic, iow not generally useful.

The Institute manuals were published and distributed by the Church for designated religious education of anyone in the Church.  What “rules of convention” are not being met by this?  How is this not “officially sanctioned or recognized” by the Church when the Church itself published these? (See Google’s definition of “formal” for quotes)

The creation of the Institute manuals was also overseen by the Correlation Committee.  How are they not part of the Church’s correlated curriculum?

https://content-preview.churchofjesuschrist.org/si/bc/si/pdf/curriculum-planning/institute-curriculum-plan.pdf

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/correlation?lang=eng

Edited August 7, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Notatbm said:

?
Publishing the essays. There would be no need to do that if the information was taught in the correlated curriculum

How does the Gospel Topic essay “Are “Mormons” Christian?” line up with your reasoning?  I assume you accept the Church has formally taught that members are Christian, that we don’t accept the creeds and believe in an open canon and other details in it prior to its publication, but perhaps I am wrong.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/christians?lang=eng

 

[Tony uk]

Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Evangelical. Acceptance of one thing, denial of something else. In the two thousand years of Catholic history, there have been separations, reform and want for a better term, 'Restarts', my term no one else's. Yet they all have the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament binding them together. Then The Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints are Christian. IMO

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, Notatbm said:

Formally? Publishing the essays. There would be no need to do that if the information was taught in the correlated curriculum starting from primary. Since they didn’t and the internet beat them to it, the church had to publish the essays. 
 

Steven snow offers good commentary on what went on with that, why they did it and why they rolled out the way they did. . I’m sure you have heard it all so I won’t post any links. 

So it counts as taught in the correlated curriculum if it:

- is taught in a Primary lesson
- the Church embarrassingly has to admit something most adult members know because they are caught not teaching plural marriage specifics to literal children so they publish an essay about it.

It does not count as part of the correlated curriculum if it:

- is taught in the scriptural canon
- is taught in any class other than Primary.
- is extensively taught in seminary and institute classes.

 

Your standards for this “gotcha” are incredibly weird. I mean, I guess by your rules you made up you win (if you squint carefully at all the right places) but I don’t expect anyone to be impressed by this absurd take down of the Church.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to claim that plural marriage is evil or something? Or to point out more obvious and more extensive coverups in church history? Why make up this unconvincing one?

[Calm]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I don’t expect anyone to be impressed by this absurd take down of the Church

This appears to be a definition that only applies to pretty much one conversation in existence…not a very effective debate tactic, imo.  I wonder who actually takes it seriously (in the sense of being informative, educational).

There are many negative critiques of plural marriage I take seriously, even very seriously.  Notatbm’s critique here will not be added to the list.

Edited August 7, 2025 by Calm

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

This appears to be a definition that only applies to pretty much one conversation in existence…not a very effective debate tactic, imo.  I wonder who actually takes it seriously (in the sense of being informative, educational).

There are many negative critiques of plural marriage I take seriously, even very seriously.  Notatbm’s critique here will not be added to the list.

Like there being more support for polyandry than polygyny in the D&C.

[california boy]

On 8/5/2025 at 5:02 PM, webbles said:

I agree that polygamy isn't a big thing the church wants to talk about.  And I think the church is right.  How does knowing that Joseph practiced polygamy have an impact on my own salvation?  How does knowing that Brigham Young practiced polygamy have an impact on my salvation?  But tithing, covenant path, missions, all of those have a direct impact on my own life.  I would absolutely love to have a good lesson on polygamy but I would absolutely hate to do it in church.  That is not where it belongs.

I absolutely love learning about the gritty details of the church.  Mountain Meadow Massacre?  Sign me up.  Specific dates on when Fanny Alger and Joseph Smith might have begun their relationship?  Awesome (the new details that Don Bradley discovered on when then relationship was discovered is really cool).  Reading the Expositor and discussing what it actually meant to them?  I'm ready.  But none of this fits in a church setting.  They are history lessons.  Church is NOT a history class.

I understand that people feel blindsided when they learn these things and maybe the church should have been more aware of that.  But these gritty details are not things that are needed for our own salvation so I can understand why the church didn't feel like it should "waste" resources on them.

I am going to push back a little bit.  The history of the Church tells what kind of person Joseph Smith was.  Keeping facts about who he was out of lessons doesn't present a true picture of who the man was.  And who he was is core to this image of him being the greatest person since Jesus Christ or whatever that often quoted statement said about him.  We got plenty of that Praise to the Man stuff and hardly anything about some of the lets say, less socially acceptable practices he participated in such as how the BoM was really translated and him marrying a 14 year old.  

[webbles]

1 hour ago, california boy said:

I am going to push back a little bit.  The history of the Church tells what kind of person Joseph Smith was.  Keeping facts about who he was out of lessons doesn't present a true picture of who the man was.  And who he was is core to this image of him being the greatest person since Jesus Christ or whatever that often quoted statement said about him.  We got plenty of that Praise to the Man stuff and hardly anything about some of the lets say, less socially acceptable practices he participated in such as how the BoM was really translated and him marrying a 14 year old.  

I would love for lessons to include more discussion about his less socially acceptable practices.  For me, it makes it easier to understand him and relate to him.  And there are even verses in D&C that reprimand him and that could be a place where we might be able to discuss that.

But the D&C year of lessons isn't really a "history of the Church" year.  We learn about the history only when it has some relation to D&C.  And not even that much.  For example, John C. Bennett is named in D&C 124 but I can't remember the last time a lesson talked about his interaction with the church and Joseph Smith.  And since we are talking about the Expositor, if you look at the lesson this year about the Martyrdom, there is no mention of it.  That lesson has almost no historical details about what happened in the lead up to the martyrdom.  But it does do a lot of "Praise to the Man stuff" because D&C 135 is full of that.  And we are studying the D&C, not the history of the church.

This is similar to our interaction with the rest of the scriptures.  In the New Testament year, we learn a lot about the life of Christ, then a little about the apostles from Acts, then a lot about Paul.  We don't get to hear much about what the other apostles did.  Or about other parts of the early Church.  It is mostly focused on what the scriptures have.

And that is what the church meetings are for, it is a place for us to learn more about the scriptures.  Any history outside of that is not really important in a church setting.

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, Notatbm said:

this item you quoted is the reference provided in the document that also had a link and a footnote number which you conveniently left out. My post stated the church cited the Nauvoo expositor and I provided the link where the reader could find it. The post is about the expositor. Not polygamy. The only reason polygamy was even mentioned is because it is in the referenced quote so the reader could find the footnote. 
 

you don’t need to lie about my post. If you feel you need to at least provide the link and footnote number just like I did instead of omitting it. 

You converted an offhand comment about "vicious lies" in the Expositor directly into a single lie about polygyny, and then you expanded that lie.  The Expositor complained about a lot, not just about polygyny by Joseph.  So why did you fasten solely upon polygyny?  Had you listed all the accusations by the Expositor, and gone over each one with an assessment of fact or fiction, that might have been a reasonable approach.  Instead, your focus was on only one issue.   Finally, you vaulted the issue into recent times, where it clearly does not belong.

Had I been there, I would have advised Joseph to leave the Expositor be.  I don't like censorship, and I don't like lying.  If modern historians consider the Expositor to be a good historical resource, I have no problem with that.  Early books and newspapers are very useful in recreating that period.  That a professional historian wrote a Gospel Topics Essay on any issue is fine with me (I even sent in some corrections to one such essay, not this one -- and the corrections were made).

Your interpretation of this entire issue seems to me deeply bigoted and ahistorical.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, california boy said:

I am going to push back a little bit.  The history of the Church tells what kind of person Joseph Smith was.  Keeping facts about who he was out of lessons doesn't present a true picture of who the man was.  And who he was is core to this image of him being the greatest person since Jesus Christ or whatever that often quoted statement said about him.  We got plenty of that Praise to the Man stuff and hardly anything about some of the lets say, less socially acceptable practices he participated in such as how the BoM was really translated and him marrying a 14 year old.  

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliette were only 13 years old, scholars consider that Mary the Mother of Jesus was only 14 when she bore Jesus, King Josiah of Judah was 13 at the birth of his first child (his next children born when he was 14 and 16 to his plural wives Zebudah and Hamutal).  Fourteen was a legal age of marriage in most American states in Joseph's day.  Presentists ignore all that.  Why?  They had no high schools in those days, and a 14-year-old girl could teach school.  My grandmother was already a legal secretary in Kansas at 14, although she did go to high school and then to Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia.  Infantilizing our young people has not been a success.

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliette were only 13 years old, scholars consider that Mary the Mother of Jesus was only 14 when she bore Jesus, King Josiah of Judah was 13 at the birth of his first child (his next children born when he was 14 and 16 to his plural wives Zebudah and Hamutal).  Fourteen was a legal age of marriage in most American states in Joseph's day.  Presentists ignore all that.  Why?  They had no high schools in those days, and a 14-year-old girl could teach school.  My grandmother was already a legal secretary in Kansas at 14, although she did go to high school and then to Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia.  Infantilizing our young people has not been a success.

Scholars don’t “consider” that at all. It was common for Jewish girls at the time to be betrothed between the ages of 12 and 16. That is not some determination in a specific case. That is a wild guess saying it wouldn’t be strange if this happened. Jumping from that to scholars having reached a conclusion is silly.

King Josiah reportedly did have a child abnormally young. That was fairly normal for aristocratic families. Producing heirs young was important. Throughout most of recorded history aristocrats have generally married younger than the bulk of the population. The ‘value’ of a woman in particular diminished with age if she was unmarried as it had commercial and alliance value. They had different incentives from commoners.

It would have been more odd for a commoner to marry that young. Not unheard of but not super common. We let our understanding of marriage practices in history be governed by the age of elite marriages because those are the ones we tend to have records of. Extrapolating that to peasant families is unwise. They had very different incentives. Juliet was a member of an elite family. She was intended to be married young. The reason elite families tended to marry their girls young was to keep lustful Romeos from spoiling the marriage value of their daughters. The play was a tragedy.

The age of first marriage varies a lot by culture in the ancient world. Greeks had a higher age for male marriage and a low one for female marriage. It was common there for men to have to wait to inherit before marrying. Higher ages of women marrying correlates with women having more rights in that society. Women had virtually no rights in Greek society. In Roman society, while still having abysmally less rights than today, were better off than the Greeks. The woman had to consent to the marriage though there were all kinds of reasons that consent was coerced both directly and indirectly. There women married older.

Also neither Joseph Smith nor his quasi-bride of a non-legal marriage were nobility so that doesn’t really track. Comparing Joseph Smith to Victorian elites or ancient elites isn’t that helpful.

The median age for a first marriage for women in the US in the 19th century was in her early 20s. It is not presentism to see that marriage as unusual. It would have been unusual then if it were an actual legal marriage (which it wasn’t). Treating the beginning of the modern period of history like it is the ancient world is just not helpful. There is a reason women married younger in the distant past. Suggesting that we should do the same when the entire incentive structure has changed is deeply flawed.

It was weird. Joseph Smith’s critics knew it was weird. They thought it was disgusting back then. Crying presentism suggests they shouldn’t have thought it was that bad.

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, california boy said:

I am going to push back a little bit.  The history of the Church tells what kind of person Joseph Smith was.  Keeping facts about who he was out of lessons doesn't present a true picture of who the man was.  And who he was is core to this image of him being the greatest person since Jesus Christ or whatever that often quoted statement said about him.  We got plenty of that Praise to the Man stuff and hardly anything about some of the lets say, less socially acceptable practices he participated in such as how the BoM was really translated and him marrying a 14 year old.  

Adding to this canonizing John Taylor’s mournful statement about his recently dead friend was a really strange move. The guy was in pain and was mourning. Imagine someone at a funeral for a dead spouse eulogizing and saying they were the greatest person who ever lived. Then someone takes that statement and decides that God approves and agrees and suddenly it becomes a matter of faith to believe it is literally true.

Meanwhile:

Michael/Adam and Eve: Ummmmmm…….we are standing right here. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Infantilizing our young people has not been a success.

Suggesting that on the basis of history that marrying 14 years olds is appropriate is itself morally abominable.

[Benjamin McGuire]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliette were only 13 years old, scholars consider that Mary the Mother of Jesus was only 14 when she bore Jesus, King Josiah of Judah was 13 at the birth of his first child (his next children born when he was 14 and 16 to his plural wives Zebudah and Hamutal).  Fourteen was a legal age of marriage in most American states in Joseph's day.  Presentists ignore all that.  Why?  They had no high schools in those days, and a 14-year-old girl could teach school.  My grandmother was already a legal secretary in Kansas at 14, although she did go to high school and then to Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia.  Infantilizing our young people has not been a success.

I wanted to clarify my position.

Presentism is the idea of judging the past by modern day norms and expectations. There isn't a lot of value in that. However, it isn't presentism to judge the practice itself - outside of that historical context. What I mean by that is that I think that there is a completely moral argument in the idea that it is wrong for parents to arrange marriages for children. Unless, or course, you want to engage the position of moral relativism - to suggest that just because we have high schools, that it is morally wrong now, and because they didn't, it was not morally wrong then. And I suppose you could take that position. But the reality is that human neurological development hasn't really changed in the last 2,000 years (let alone the last 200). Children did not become mature adults as teenagers 2,000 years ago any more than they do today. And this is on top of the rather offensive suggestion that you make here in your comparing concerns with 14 year old children getting married to the idea of infants getting married (that is such a gross and offensive comparison Robert). Having said that, I wanted to point out a couple of other things -

Let's start with Romeo and Juliette. They never got married. Why? Because when Juliette fakes her own death to avoid a forced marriage to an older man, Romeo commits suicide. And shortly afterward, Juliette commits suicide. If anything, there is a moral lesson here being shared by Shakespeare over the issue of teenagers being forced into arranged marriages. And it isn't the lesson you are offering us.

Even today, with our modern medical technology, 14 year old girls giving birth are five times more likely to die in childbirth than are women who do the same in their 20s. They aren't really built for it. It isn't normal or healthy or good - especially in aggregate. Instead of using the examples that may have worked from the past - which aren't necessarily mainstream - let's discuss all of the problem cases that have come with underage forced marriages and address those alongside your examples. Then we would have a real picture of what is going on instead of this fantasy world that you are living in.

Edited August 8, 2025 by Benjamin McGuire

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

...................................

The median age for a first marriage for women in the US in the 19th century was in her early 20s. It is not presentism to see that marriage as unusual. It would have been unusual then if it were an actual legal marriage (which it wasn’t). ................

What was normal at the beginning of the 19th century does in no way control the average (median) age at the end of the century.  Presentism is the silly notion that what is acceptable today was always the case, which it was not.

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

It was weird. Joseph Smith’s critics knew it was weird. They thought it was disgusting back then. Crying presentism suggests they shouldn’t have thought it was that bad.

Especially among haters and rumor-mongers, anything can be asserted with fervor, and reality ignored.  Presentism is modern people passing snap judgment.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Suggesting that on the basis of history that marrying 14 years olds is appropriate is itself morally abominable.

Spoken like a true presentist.  Passing harsh judgment on foreign cultures is morally abominable.  Anthropologists just don't do it.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I wanted to clarify my position.

Presentism is the idea of judging the past by modern day norms and expectations. There isn't a lot of value in that. However, it isn't presentism to judge the practice itself - outside of that historical context. What I mean by that is that I think that there is a completely moral argument in the idea that it is wrong for parents to arrange marriages for children. Unless, or course, you want to engage the position of moral relativism - to suggest that just because we have high schools, that it is morally wrong now, and because they didn't, it was not morally wrong then. And I suppose you could take that position. But the reality is that human neurological development hasn't really changed in the last 2,000 years (let alone the last 200). Children did not become mature adults as teenagers 2,000 years ago any more than they do today. And this is on top of the rather offensive suggestion that you make here in your comparing concerns with 14 year old children getting married to the idea of infants getting married (that is such a gross and offensive comparison Robert). Having said that, I wanted to point out a couple of other things -

Let's start with Romeo and Juliette. They never got married. Why? Because when Juliette fakes her own death to avoid a forced marriage to an older man, Romeo commits suicide. And shortly afterward, Juliette commits suicide. If anything, there is a moral lesson here being shared by Shakespeare over the issue of teenagers being forced into arranged marriages. And it isn't the lesson you are offering us.

Even today, with our modern medical technology, 14 year old girls giving birth are five times more likely to die in childbirth than are women who do the same in their 20s. They aren't really built for it. It isn't normal or healthy or good - especially in aggregate. Instead of using the examples that may have worked from the past - which aren't necessarily mainstream - let's discuss all of the problem cases that have come with underage forced marriages and address those alongside your examples. Then we would have a real picture of what is going on instead of this fantasy world that you are living in.

Yep.  A fair summary from our modern, enlightened POV.  Indeed, the tendency nowadays is to delay marriage -- if there is any marriage at all -- into the 30s.  Of course the Latter-day Saint, Amish, Hutterite, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish subcultures are more likely to marry earlier and to have a higher birthrate.

My own parents didn't marry until age 25, and then had five healthy children.  Mom and Dad had both graduated college and established themselves first.  It is presentism to expect earlier peoples to fit our preferred mode of life.  We need to describe what they did, not pass judgment -- which is the true fantasy.

[Calm]

45 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

We need to describe what they did, not pass judgment -- which is the true fantasy.

Not even to say that it appeared to be socially harmful for teens to have children given the higher mortality rate of younger mothers?  Is it inappropriate to judge death of mothers as undesirable for a society?  Is the ability to produce many healthy future citizens an important quality in a society?

What social need would be more important than saving the lives of young mothers?  Serious question.

I am separating this from marriage. I see it as possible to form the bonds between families seen as necessary for political stability or financial gain by performing betrothals while the young woman ages to a better survival rate.  Thus one could grow wealth and prevent wars while also prevent high maternal death rates among young women.

Edited August 8, 2025 by Calm